Communications receivers, such as selective call receivers, receive selective call signals and demodulate and decode the signals to derive selective call messages addressed to the receiver. To determine whether the selective call signal is directed to the receiver, the address of the message is correlated with one or more addresses assigned to the selective call receiver. When an address of the receiver is positively correlated, the message is decoded.
Typically, the selective call message types comprise numeric or alphanumeric information. The decoded message information is provided to a memory for storage and to a display driver for immediate display or user selectable display, the user being advised of the arrival of the message by activation of a user perceptible alert.
Recently, selective call message types have been expanded to include facsimile messages and graphic messages, in addition to lengthy alphanumeric messages. The display driver may not be able to handle the lengthy messages. Furthermore, in utilization of some selective call receivers, the longer alphanumeric messages or the graphic messages may be more appropriate for handling by a peripheral device than by the display drive of the selective call receiver.
Thus, what is needed is a message handling method and apparatus which can handle both normal selective call messages and lengthier selective call messages.